Mono No Aware (Tokyo Works 2014-2024)

Jonathan Savoie
January 30 ~ February 28, 2025
"Mono no aware" (物の哀れ)

（Ｔｏｋｙｏ Ｗｏｒｋｓ）２０１４－２０２４ - "Mono no aware" (物の哀れ) is a Japanese concept that roughly translates to "the pathos of things" or "the awareness of the impermanence of things." 

It refers to the bittersweet feeling or quiet sadness that arises when you realize that everything—whether it be people, moments, or objects—is transient and constantly changing.

This awareness comes with an appreciation of beauty in the fleeting nature of life. It's a recognition that things are beautiful precisely because they are temporary. 

For over two decades, Jonathan Savoie has been immersed in the layered complexities of Tokyo, capturing not just a city, but the very act of existence within it. His photographs, a curated selection from a larger body of work, do not present Tokyo in any traditional sense. They are not postcards or grand statements, but fragments—moments of quiet observation that refuse to align with conventional understandings of time and space.

What is perhaps most compelling about this work is how it resists easy categorization. Each image is a record, yes, but it is also an exploration—a questioning of what it means to frame a scene, to capture a fleeting moment in a world where nothing remains fixed. These photographs speak to the impermanence of daily life in Tokyo, but not in any obvious or melodramatic way. There is no sweeping narrative of decay or destruction. Instead, there is a constant, quiet movement: small gestures, hidden corners, overlooked details that reveal the city’s rhythms in subtle ways. The artist is drawn not to the obvious but to the unnoticed—the moments that are here and then gone, the ones that exist between the spaces of our collective awareness.

The images themselves are a reflection of the paradox at the heart of Savoie’s practice: the tension between presence and absence, between the act of seeing and the act of capturing. Photography is often understood as an attempt to preserve the moment, but here, it seems to ask a different question—what does it mean to make a moment permanent? 

What is lost in the process of reproduction, and what is revealed? Each frame is a reproduction of a scene, a person, or a place—but it is also an invitation to reconsider how we engage with the world around us.

In these photographs, the city is not merely a backdrop, but a participant—a shifting, fluid entity that becomes inseparable from the photographer’s gaze. These images do not offer answers. They are not explanations of Tokyo or even of the artist’s relationship to the city. Instead, they open up the space for reflection, for contemplation on the fleeting nature of life, on the constant transformation of the urban environment, and on what it means to find home in a place that is never quite the same from moment to moment. Through his lens, Savoie not only documents a city, but interrogates the very act of seeing it, questioning what we choose to remember, and why we choose to hold onto certain fragments while letting others slip away.

Biography

Raised in Canada, Jonathan Savoie moved to Europe to study art and design before relocating to Tokyo in 2000 to pursue a career in photography.Savoie has worked with some of Japan's leading design firms and architects as well as some of the world's largest agencies. Savoie’s work has been used in advertising campaigns as well as being featured in editorial publications such as  Casa Vogue,  Condé Nast Traveler, FRAME  GQ,  Interior Design,  Objekt,  The Economist, TIME and the Wall Street Journal